This is a blog by a 20-something in the northeast trying to figure out how she and her DH can find their way to true financial freedom.

Sunday, March 02, 2008

February Wrap Up

I tried again the cash budget. I have no idea what I spent where, but I believe I spent $120 on groceries, and $142 on eating out. I still feel as though we could have spent less, but I completely lost track of our cash spending. Defintiely the eating out was higher than expected because 2x we went out in a group and spent way more than we needed to. I am tired of this trying to use cash. I feel a definite loss of control. Do we spend less? Yes/no. I find that we scrimp and buy less healthy food because of my cheapness. But overall I don't think we spend that much less.

As for our net worth, we got rid of our credit card debt by $244. We increased our retirement by $6800 solely due to contributions. Our retirement is at $74k, our cash savings decreased to $11887, and our taxable accounts decreased to $7800. But overall our networth increased by 0.85% = $1848.

Not a terrible month, but mostly we've been contributing to our Roth IRAs $3k out of $10k, $1200 into the 401k, and yet everything goes down. We also are contributing to DH's ESPP the maximum, but I can't figure out how much it is.

I'm curious to know why you want to do a cash budget so much. If keeping track of where the expenese go why not use a debt card or a CC that's paid in full each month, this way you have an exact record of what you spend and where. Plus you can upload this info into any money tracking software like Microsoft Money, Quicken or Wesabe. Personally that's what I do, because if I had to write down each time I spent cash I'd never keep track of it all or be able to see how much I have left to spend in each budget category.

I also hate cash, I just can't track where it goes! At one point, I realize it's all gone, and I have no idea where most of it went. Really not a good budgeting tool for me. It might limit my spending if I had a fixed amount, but I like to know how much I spent on everything. Debit or credit cards are great for that, I even download directly my transactions into Quicken!

And remember, saving money is not the only goal, it is more like spending it wisely. Groceries is a big part in my budget, because I want quality nutritious meals. I spend 35$/week on fruits & veggies alone. But what is money for if you don't spend any?